Alien: Films, TV and Key Events (in order)

Overview

Humanity pushes farther into deep space long before it understands what waits there. Weyland Corporation funds ambitious missions, colonial routes widen, and crews learn to treat distant signals, silent ruins, and abandoned ships with a level of caution that earlier decades often lack. The first major entries in the record sit in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries, when expeditions tied to Peter Weyland and later Weyland Corp place human personnel in direct contact with Engineer sites, black liquid bioweapons, and ecosystems that do not behave like any ordinary frontier hazard. LV-223 matters for that reason. So does the Covenant mission a few years later, because it shows how quickly colonisation plans can collide with ancient technology and hostile biology.

By 2122, commercial towing vessels rather than elite research teams carry the burden of first widely documented contact. The Nostromo incident turns a remote distress signal on LV-426 into one of the most important crisis records in the entire franchise chronology. Ripley’s later disappearance leaves gaps, rumours, and incomplete corporate understanding, but the threat does not vanish. Sevastopol Station in 2137 proves that point brutally, showing what happens when salvage interests, synthetic research, and failing infrastructure converge around an organism nobody can reliably contain. A rougher, more fragmented period follows, and even titles with less precise dating, such as Alien: Romulus in the 2130s, sit inside that uneasy middle ground between the Nostromo era and the better known military response decades later.

Hadley’s Hope in 2179 marks another turning point because the problem no longer belongs to a single ship or station. Colonial Marines, terraforming infrastructure, and family settlement life all become part of the same disaster zone, which gives the later timeline a broader social and political weight. Fiorina 161 pushes the record into an even harsher corner, stripping away military force and leaving people to improvise under impossible conditions. Much later, Alien: Resurrection carries the chronology into 2381, where cloning and classified research prove that distance in time does not guarantee wisdom. Across all of these entries, one pattern keeps returning: corporations chase leverage, institutions react too slowly, and ordinary crews pay the price when curiosity outruns procedure.

Key Timeline Records

FAQ

When does Prometheus happen in the Alien timeline?

Prometheus takes place in 2093, with its expedition and aftermath extending into 2094. It sits early in the chronology and establishes major links between human exploration, Weyland ambition, and Engineer technology.

Where does Alien: Isolation fit in the Alien chronology?

Alien: Isolation takes place in 2137. That puts it after the Nostromo crisis in Alien and before the Colonial Marine deployment seen in Aliens, during a period when companies still try to recover data and assets from earlier disasters.